The Blacklist 1.10 Review: Separation Anxiety

For all those that have yet to watch last night’s episode of The Blacklist, entitled ‘Anslo Garrick (No. 16) Conclusion’, then now is a great time for you to go and do that. This is not a spoiler free blog. THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS! You’ve been warned.

Well, we got our conclusion to Anslo Garrick storyline this week, including a very nicely executed death scene that Red carried out. There were a lot of great moments to this episode, but for the most part I just found myself confused. I mean, who was the guy that was talking to Red? What does Red have on them? Have we met them before? So many questions that it was almost difficult to enjoy this episode.

That being said, there were some good points to this conclusion. We got to see a lot more Aram, similar to last week’s episode, which was great. We also got to see Keen take down that man in the building across from hers effectively well. More suspicion, at least for our eyes, arose surrounding her husband, which is a tantalizing story I look forward to investigating further. Also, Dembe is most assuredly alive, and that is something I am very happy about. Getting to see Ressler kind of happy when his engaged ex-fiancé visits him in the hospital was almost worth the pain he went through. And one other thing was how comically good that team “Mr. Kaplan” used to take out that warehouse. They were really good. So, really, there was a lot of great stuff to this week’s episode, it just didn’t all seem to fit cohesively together as much as it normally does. The story was kind of a mess.

Overall, this episode was just messy. I did enjoy Aram and Keen working together, and getting to see Red say goodbye for now to Keen, with his parting words being to watch her husband. Again, the oddity of Ressler smiling was astounding in that he’s always the broody, dramatic character, and I definitely want to see more of that, particularly with interactions with Keen. I still have yet to see Cooper evolve into a fully formed character; for the most part he seems like a leader that doesn’t really have any more to him. The cameras in Keen’s apartment came to a head a lot earlier than I expected, and I’m not sure how I’m feeling about this series going forward, but I do think that of all ten episodes, this is merely the weakest, and I’m okay with that. Still, I have one question, and that’s was Red lying when he said he wasn’t Lizzie’s father, or was that a definitive answer? It didn’t sound like one to me, so I’m hoping he was lying.

My rating: 7 out of 10.

Best Lines:

“If you can’t save her, you’re of no use whatsoever.” – Red tells Ressler, after having saved his life.

“Anslo, what are you doing here?” – Red questions the man, knowing he was there all along.

“But I suppose I could make us a copy.” – Aram says to Keen, knowing it will be breaking the rules.

Okay, I’m off to review The Originals in a minute. Afterwards check back in for reviews of Supernatural and Trophy Wife.